NFT Creator Nate Alex Is Selling 70 CryptoPunks Too Early – Cointelegraph Magazine

If you take Nate Alex's Whisper on X and his DIY Hexagon Rainbow Cat Doodle on top, you can't go wrong. But beneath that exterior lies a passion for NFTs as a creator and collector and a passion for programmable art.

After making his first NFT in 2017, Nate became fascinated with CryptoKitties and the breeding potential of crypto-cats. While still working as an engineer, before starting a full-time job at Web3 in 2020, Nate's early NFT home was the CryptoKitties Discord when he went down the rabbit hole.

The Nashville, Tennessee, resident is one of the most prolific NFT collectors on the scene, but admits his portfolio could be astronomical if he were to sniff out the 70+ CryptoPunks and 30 Autoglyphs he's sold.

“I've cycled about 70 punks; it hurts to think. I have one punk (#2909), which I bought exactly last year, so I had zero for a while. I sold most of my stuff very early,” says Nate, explaining the idea at first to make a little extra money and live. It was trying.

“My first thought is if you put $100 into something and it's $300, take that money out and find the next thing and keep trying to do that. That was my strategy instead of buying something for $100 and hoping that one day it would cost $100,000.

“Autoglyphs was hard. In hindsight, it's hard to take that on the chin. I was at work and bought 30 in 2019 totaling over $1,000. The next day they sell for 5-10x more. In my mind, oh my God, I just turned $1,000 into $7,000 or $8,000. This is great, so I'm selling and trading them.

“I was upset and it was hard because I know how important they are and how special they are. Just the amount of money that was there for me at the time – which doesn't seem like much anymore – was too much to ignore.

The first in the PFP series

Nate co-founded one of the first chained PFP collections, ChainFaces with good friend j1mmy.eth, another chained PFP pioneer with the Avastars collection.

Alongside ChainFaces, Nate also produced Squiggly WTF, and in January 2022, his innovative game ChainFaces Arena caught fire, bringing back the spotlight while NFTs still command the lion's share of attention on Crypto Twitter.

“I think one of my problems is that my Twitter (X) is all over the place. I'll tweet about shitcoins or memes, or general market ideas. Then I might be tweeting about things I've paid too much for or good trades I've made, so I think my image in the NFT space can be skewed. .

The image is mostly what I trade and collect, but what I really enjoy is trying to create cool things.

Nate's early NFT babies – ChainFaces and Squiggly WTF

ChainFaces was born in January 2020 – 10,000 randomly generated ASCII text faces on a chain and Nate's first campaign to create them. The project will store all the metadata and features on the chain, inspired by Autoglyphs developed by Larva Labs eight months ago.

“The idea behind ChainFaces was extremely simple. I thought of generative ASCII text faces and stored the ASCII faces in strings like autoglyphs. It was a combination of Autoglyphs and CryptoPunks the way I thought of it.

“Ten thousand because 10,000 Punks and caps makes sense because I don't want to breed ChainFaces; it's not CryptoKitties. Some people thought it was cute and fancy, and it came out.”

When asked where ChainFaces sits in the history and timeline of NFTs' evolution, Nate isn't overly concerned, but believes it will have some historical significance in the years and decades to come.

“With ChainFaces, I feel like I want to do something. I wanted to release something. I left ChainFaces in January 2020 and I quit in March 2020. So I said you can be a part of this space that's building and you can be a part of it,” he said.

“I think it was a big risk to even do it, but that was part of the purpose behind it. I think the historical relevance will stand out in 10 years. 50,000 or 100,000 projects that start in 2021 may never come back, and that's now.” It is accepted.

Later in 2020, Nate created Squiggly, a 100-piece algorithmic art collection on a chain. The Squiggly line art has a unique style and did exceptionally well for such a low supply, with a volume of 869 ETH, including sales of 50 ETH for Squiggly #10 and 45 ETH for Squiggly #17.

“Squiggly was an art generated on a chain where the whole generator was stored in a contract layer. Again, it was kind of like Autoglyphs, but this time it wasn't ASCII. It was an SVG file and I was trying to do something cool,” Nate said.

“I mean, Squiggly is pretty under the radar, but they still have value in the marketplace. There's been some strong sales, so I mean, I think I have a knack for creating things that people really like and want. I haven't hit a home run yet.”

Remembering the days of CryptoKitties

Having been a part of the CryptoKitties hype of 2017-18 alongside what would become a tight-knit friendship group, Nate remembers well how special those times were and how cryptopunks weren't so popular at the time.

“Around December 2017, the CryptoKitties mania was happening, and people were spending $100,000 on singles. That was outrageous for us. That's more than what we'd spend on a digital cat image,” says Nate.

“I hadn't played anywhere near that level. I was buying cats for like $5-$10 and I had to figure out why someone would spend $100,000 on it. That was like my whole point, why would someone do this? I need to know why because obviously there are some financial reasons.

“With punk, it was low profile at the time, and no one cared. Back then it was more about CryptoKitties and they had their own marketplace. They had this big website and me and Gameplay in air quotes where you could take two of your cats and breed them together to get a new cat. has been.

Nate recalls that his fellow collectors shared the same sentiment that punks looked good, but there was no market for them at the time.

Most of us were a curious bunch with Ja1mi, Pranksy, etc. We went there not to spend a few thousand on punk because the market was so small. I always thought they looked good and remember they might look good printed on your wall with my friends. But most of us are sitting in CryptoKitties; If I had to do a split on it, it would probably be like 98% kitty and 2% punks at the time.

Nate has been vocal about collectors considering the long-term value of the Gen 0 kitten (about 36,500 of the 2+ million CryptoKitties total supply) and the founder cats (about 100 of them).

“For me, if you have 50 CryptoPunks, you should sell one and buy a founder. [CryptoKitty] Because there is a historical perspective. People look at it and say the kitties floor is low and there are 2 million of them. 2 million so obviously the floor is low.”

But he also points out that there are zillions of baseball cards that are worthless, but that doesn't make the Willie Mays rookie card any less valuable.

“These things have a huge network effect because anybody can buy the cheap shit. And yes, most cards and most of these things have a penny floor. But that doesn't mean the high end and most coveted things aren't worth it, because they are.”

Chain front Arena and program art

Back to “doing more cool stuff”, Nate launched the month-long tournament ChainFaces Arena in January 2022, when the NFT bull run was still in full swing.

“The whole idea here is to take the whole bunch of NFTs and put them in the arena. If they die, you don't get them back, and we put millions of dollars into encouraging people to try to live longer than others. I wanted to mess this up and then have people go, ‘Holy shit, I didn't know NFTs could do that,'” Nate says.

It went live in the first second of 2022.

“Once it's up and running, the first sale happens, the platform opens, people come in, millions are sent, and the next day the platform launches, I could be dead and the whole thing plays out. And in the right way.”

This is what Nate likes to call programmable art, and he feels we've only just begun to scratch the surface of what's possible with the technology.

“I like the idea that you can't do that physically. The contract was paid with an arena bonus. It's all automated and it's all just smart contract management. It is programmable art.”

“I don't think that place has been entered yet. I mean you have big guys like Terraforms, which is pretty high profile, really. Gethers by Matt Kane is another. It's definitely high profile, but in most cases, projects like this are pretty much under the radar. Only a small group of programmers have the trouble to make them.

Quick fire question and answer

Name your favorite art NFT that isn't yours in your wallet?

“Giant Swan I can still feel this wind. I think they are very good. It sure was an earlier Nifty Gateway drop. He showed me before he went down. It's like photographs but there is subtle movement.

Favorite NFTs in your entire collection?

Fraudulent number 0

Hashmarks #49 by 0xDEAFBEEF

Founder Cat #86 from the CryptoKitties collection

Bullish or bearish on NFTs over Bitcoin and Solana?

“You know, that's a tough question because if you'd asked me three months ago, I would have said no, Ethereum is where it's at. But it's hard not to get distracted by all the attention. I don't see anyone doing anything particularly interesting on those chains at the modern contract level… More focus on the programmable aspect.” I think it should.

“I like Bitcoin because I think it will be here in 100 years… and so NFTs on top of it will be here in 100 years. I'd say Ethereum definitely has the second best chance of being here in 100 years, although I wouldn't necessarily say it was 100%. For Solana, I'd say the odds of them being here in 100 years are probably less than 50% but I don't know for sure.

“From a business perspective, I'm looking with interest to see where new money flows. I think they'll probably be good plays, at least in the short term. Now I'm messing with both.”

What do you think is an undervalued or underappreciated NFT project right now?

In addition to mentioning my own project by Chainface, I also mention Entropy by Nahiko. I think Nahiko is a very interesting blockchain artist. He is also a good person. I've known him for a while, but his first foray into crypto-art was doing hacks and then making tokens.

They are dynamic based on what happens on the blockchain. What I love is the tie-in to the overall programmatic art narrative. I've bought a ton of them before and they've had a great run.

Your strategy for collecting NFT?

“I like to buy cheap stuff that, at least in the current market, nobody has to deal with. I mentioned programmatic art. That's one of the most underappreciated narratives right now. I think it's one of the ones that's really catching on.”

“I've seen a lot of things that are very cheap and can be historically significant.”

“Maybe it will take a year, maybe it will take two years, at this point I don't care. If I buy something for $50 or $100, I don't care if it goes to zero. I will not sell until it is $10,000. That's definitely more my strategy to find unique and interesting things.

Are there any artists you think we should be paying attention to?

“I'd say Nahiko and James, which is interesting.

“I like Oxfam too. I retweeted something about him recently, but he's another kind of experimental blockchain artist.

What are some good tips on how the market works for new NFT collectors and traders?

“I feel like a lot of things that were winners were long shots at the time. A lot of people think they have to go in and buy the most expensive thing, and that's going to be a winner. I think that's probably true for punk. I think punk is a lot easier and safer to play. I think for a lot of other things When new people come in, they have no historical significance and no context to appreciate things done in 2021. To them, they look like nicknamed animals.

“They don't buy those things. They are going to buy new things,” he said.

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Greg Oxford

Greg Oakford is co-founder of NFT Fest Australia. A former marketing and communications professional in the world of sports, Greg now focuses on content creation and consulting at Web3. He is an avid NFT collector and hosts a weekly podcast covering all things NFTs.

Follow the author @GregOakford